1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to systems and methods for generating test cases, and more particularly to methods and systems for generating test cases using rule-based generation of test cases from abstract representations.
2. Description of the Related Art
Creation and maintenance of proper test cases that provide adequate coverage and effectiveness in terms of uncovering bugs is a very challenging and resource intensive activity. The current approaches in test case management do not ensure required level of reusability and maintainability of test cases. This results in repeating cycles of recreation of test cases from version to version, environment to environment and platform to platform.
Current approaches to test case creation are either manual programming in one of many programming languages or recording test cases using record/playback systems. In both approaches, the test cases are created and managed as sequence of programming language statements known as test scripts. These test scripts are then managed through a set of utilities which treats them like files on storage disks.
One of the disadvantages of managing test cases this way is that they are tied to a target execution environment. Different test execution environments support different scripting languages and same operation will be represented by different statements in these environments. If the enterprise software company decides to change the test execution system, all their test cases have to be recreated in the new environment.
Considering the substantial investments required by such an endeavor, many software development organizations will be tied to a single vendor of test execution environments. In addition, testing enterprise applications in customized environments also presents a challenge. Most of the enterprise applications are substantially customized in their customer environments. Testing the application against a standard test suite can ensure that the application has not been altered in undesired ways. Providing such test cases can reduce the rollout time for such applications at customer sites as well as improve the efficiency of field support activities. The inability of customers to support the same test execution environments as that of the software provider makes this impossible.
Enterprise applications require testing across a large number of platforms. These platforms involve a technology stack of operating systems, database systems and other applications that they work with. For efficient management of test cases, the scripts shall not be tied to any specific platform.
Almost all enterprise applications support internationalization and localization, it is important that the same tests can be executed with data sets in different languages and different locale formats. In order to achieve this, the data sets have to be separated from the test scenarios. When test cases are managed as scripts, this requires one to parameterize the scripts manually. This again involves substantial investments of highly skilled labor.
The test cases that are parameterized, as described in the previous paragraph, are also required to ensure adequate coverage. The same test scenario must be executed with different datasets, different boundary condition values for example, to guarantee proper functioning of the system,
When an enterprise application moves from one release to the next, even subtle changes such as layout changes to user interfaces can result in changes to the test cases. Lack of abstractions within the test case representation using scripts substantially decreases the reusability of test cases and increases maintenance costs.
All enterprise applications have functionality that is repeated in many different contexts. The ability to create test cases in a modular fashion improves their reusability. The test cases for the same functionality may be reused in an test scenarios that uses the same functionality. Most scripting environments provide modularity through support of procedures. Such procedural abstractions are limited in their ability because the test cases not only encompass the procedural abstraction but also the data abstraction. Appropriate abstractions within the test case management systems are to be devised so that test cases can be built in a modular fashion and recombined efficiently and effectively.
There is a need for improved systems and methods for generating test cases. There is a further need for improved methods and systems for generating test cases using rule-based generation of test cases from abstract representations.